posted 07-27-2010 07:14 PM               

In other words, I have never seen a picture or description of "Cosmonaut operating an experiment in the Kibo/Columbus/Destiny module", or "Astronaut performs maintenance tasks in the Zvezda/Zarya/Poisk" module, at least since crew size increased to six.

It seems like cosmonauts spend the bulk of their work hours on the Russian side, and astronauts on the U.S. side. One would think tasks would be shared and spread around on a true "international" vessel.

posted 07-27-2010 07:37 PM               

To that end, there is a clear division of responsibilities between the U.S. and Russian segments, with crew time from the 'opposite' side being bartered for when needed by the other.

Even when U.S. or Russian crew members work in Columbus or Kibo, it is done with the permission of ESA or JAXA, respectively.

This multi-nation vs. international approach does have it benefits, as was recently cited by Jim Oberg writing for MSNBC:

Probably the biggest and happiest hardware-related surprise of the space station is how the patched-together design -- a Russian segment at one end, a swiftly expanding U.S. segment at the other -- has offered unexpectedly strong robustness. It may look like a classic engineering "kluge," and the interfaces may have been lashed together with inelegant rigging. But when push came to shove, boy, did it ever hold together. In the face of failure of systems from either country, the other country's equipment could and did stand in.

The design philosophy here is not to build one integrated vehicle comprising components from a dozen sources. It's to create a system from separately developed space vehicles, bundled and cross-connected but still vastly different in their engineering cultures. It has worked for the International Space Station, and it can work for future big projects.

posted 07-29-2010 11:32 AM               

I remember being surprised to learn that John Phillips had one in Destiny during Expedition 11. (I assumed all of the two-person crews bunked in Zarya.)

posted 07-29-2010 02:27 PM               

• Two cabins inside the Zvezda service module
  
• Three cabins inside Harmony Node 2
  
• One cabin in JAXA's Kibo Laboratory (to be moved into Harmony by October)

You can see the cabin in Kibo in the foreground of this photo taken during the still on-going Expedition 24 on June 24.

You can see an example of the two Zvezda sleep stations in this photo, also from Expedition 24.